Ode on an Indian Summer

As I was driving home from work yesterday, I wittnessed a sad sight: the dismantling of the sandwich stand at Oak street Beach. They were stacking up the lifeguard chairs and preparing to pile the sand against the coming icy waves and bergs. All the volleyball nets and beach side muscle benches were standing abandoned; no young "singles" laughing and flirting amongst them this month. Although we're into October (yet it's 87 degrees out), these sights were what finally convinced me that the summer is officially over.

Looking backwards, this summer seems sooooo full of events that it doesn't seem that it could contain them all. I don't even want to think about all the things that have changed this past summer (boys and jobs and lives and dogs; four cities; the weather & country together. . .), not to even mention the marking of a full quarter century for (almost) all of us. Sheesh. But on the forward motion side, I'm finding myself startled that it's already fall. It was a strange feeling. I was telepathically (pathetelically? pathetically?) saying to the Tall White Chairs standing together on the beach:

"And you, lifeguard chair, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."


I don't know if that's what Mrs. Ljung intended, eh?


The ACTUAL Dylan Thomas poem is here